The invention relates to decoration or decorative articles or elements for a garment, including individual elements of glass or synthetic material, each having a back provided with an adhesive defining a flat adhesion surface.
Such elements are produced with various surface configurations, colors and materials. Application of such elements conventionally takes place by placing the elements, which are fastened with their front surface on an adhesive film, on an ironing pad and connecting them permanently at their adhesive surfaces with a garment under the effect of pressure and temperature. It is critical that none of the elements forming a pattern become detached from the garment since breaking a regular pattern is immediately apparent as being unattractive and cancels the decorative effect.
In order to ensure reliable adhesion of the elements on a substrate comprising textiles, leather or synthetic material, efforts have been made in the past (cf. GB 1 325 293) to provide the decorative elements to be as flat as possible so that forces acting from the outside, such as are unavoidable especially during a laundry process, generate only low moments in the adhesive surface, for that reason it was not obvious to use the elements in the form of retroreflectors for the decoration of garments. A retroreflector is understood to be an optical element having a front bounded by a transparent, convex, in particular spherical, incident surface, and a curved back coated with a reflecting material extending essentially in the focal surface of incident light. At customary values of the coefficient of refraction, this condition is only fulfilled with an element whose height is greater than its diameter.
In order to be able to affix retroreflectors on crash barriers, check posts, etc., they are conventionally arranged one adjacent to the other and embedded in a synthetic support which is attached to the bearing base by adhesion or some other way. The individual attachment of retroreflectors to a base by means of asphalt has already been suggested (cf. U.S. Re Pat. No. 20,731). On the other hand, in order to make textiles, for example the protective clothing of traffic policemen, retroreflecting, small spheres having a diameter of the order of magnitude of 10-100.mu. are embedded in the surface of films such that a portion of these small spheres is exposed. The embedded surface of each small sphere is metallized, while from the exposed portion the metal coating is removed. It has also been already suggested to back a transparent small sphere completely with a reflecting foil disposed in its focal surface.